


Nostalgia

by lod



Series: Pegoryu Week 2018 [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Bad Puns, Fluff and Angst, M/M, POV First Person, PegoRyu week, Spoilers, Stars, akiryu, pegoryu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-31 09:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lod/pseuds/lod
Summary: Ryuji and Akira spend an evening together in Leblanc’s attic.





	Nostalgia

When I come by after school to bring Akira our schoolwork, he seems distracted. I have to repeat half of what I say before he hears me, and I keep catching him staring off into space absently. It’s enough to get me curious, but not really worried; even though it’s only been a few weeks since the Casino, Akira seems to have had no trouble moving past it. He goes out all the time, with that awful ratty hoodie pulled up over his head like it’s going to fool anyone, and the brutal investigation doesn’t seem to have left too many marks on him, physical or otherwise.

I think I may be having more trouble getting over it than him, to be honest. When I look at him, I still see phantom bruises, bleeding gashes. The needle punctures on his arm, as tiny as they were, remain the scariest. We hadn’t accounted for the fact that they might drug him; the whole plan relied on Akira being able to persuade Sae, and they brought him to within an inch of unconsciousness. I feel physically sick when I think of how close we came to being taken at our own game, of how close I came to losing him.

We spend some time going over the class notes in a booth. It’s kind of a joke, really, me trying to explain math to him, but it’s a ritual by now. I come by every night, drop off the day’s notes, explain them to him, and tell him about the small, mundane things that happened at school.

Today, I’ve got a story about a seagull that stole one of Ann’s fries at lunch. The best part was Makoto’s squeal as it flew down towards us, and when I imitate the high-pitched shriek, his bright laugh echoes across the cafe. I’m glad to see him happy. For all that I complain about having to go to school, I’d miss it if I couldn’t go. Not the classes, obviously! But all the moments around the classes, spent with friends… I’d get lonely without them, and I think Akira feels the same. I hope the stories help at least a little. 

It’s only a few hours later, after I go out to get dinner — convenience store sushi — that I realise maybe something’s actually wrong. When I come back he’s lying down on his bed, eyes unfocused, and he doesn’t even register that I’m there until I say hi. The look on his face when he turns to see me is a bit uncertain; not sad, but not happy, either. Thoughtful.

I walk over to the bed, put the sushi on the floor and poke at his shoulder until he lifts his head up long enough for me to sit beneath it. Leaning back against the wall with his head in my lap, I run my fingers through his hair. It’s as soft as velvet, and I could stay like that for hours. Even though it’s been a couple of months by now, I still have trouble believing Akira’s really mine. I took a huge gamble when I told him how I felt; I was so sure I would lose it all, his friendship, our close group of friends… and then he told me he liked me back. I replay the scene in my head sometimes, more often than I’d really like to admit. Every movement, every sound of that afternoon is etched into my memory in crystal-clear detail, and it’s better than anything on TV.

Finding out Akira liked me was like winning the lottery. It was overwhelming, exciting, amazing. Unthinkable. After a few months, all those emotions are still there, like an intense glow inside of me every time I think about him, but they’ve been joined by a slightly less positive one — fear. I read an article online once that said the majority of people who win the lottery end up just as poor as they were before within a few years, and at times I’m terrified that’ll happen to me with Akira. That I’ll wake up one morning, and realise I lost him somewhere along the way, let him trickle through my fingers until there was nothing left but a memory.

Luckily, being around him tends to ease that fear. I’ve always felt so comfortable with him, and dating hasn’t changed that. There’s no secrets between us, no awkwardness; it’s like he’s reading my mind and I’m reading his, most of the time. Which is why I want to know why he’s got that unusual far away look in his eyes. I sit back up.

“Is something wrong?”

There’s no immediate response, which is all the answer I need. I’m about to ask what I can do to help, though, when he replies.

“It’s been a year.”

Well, that’s cryptic. “A year?”

“Since the night with Shido. When I got arrested.”

Oh. I’m not sure what to say to that. It pisses me off so much, the idea of anyone treating Akira badly; I want to jump up and head into Shido’s Palace right here and now. It’s a dumb impulse, of course, but I just can’t wait to take that asshole down. The amount of pain and suffering he’s caused Akira would be enough to condemn him in my eyes. The way he acts like the world and everyone living in it are his for the taking, to manipulate and destroy as suits his will, that cements his spot as a supreme bastard. At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that he’s gonna get what’s coming to him.

“I’m sorry,” I start to tell Akira, but he’s shaking his head, smiling gently, and he doesn’t look like he’s sad or angry.

“No, don’t be sorry. I’m ok with it. If I hadn’t been arrested, I’d never have met you.”

Trust the guy to make being arrested into something romantic. I’m a sucker for that shit; I blush at his words, and judging by the way his smile turns into a smirk, that’s what he was waiting for. He’s a smug asshole, but what can I say. He’s my smug asshole. I try to flick his ear; he’s too fast for me though, and dodges it easily before he continues talking.

“You know, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped on that street. If I’d just kept my head down and walked away. Would the universe have found someone else to take my place? Or would Shido have just gone on unchecked, with no one to stop Akechi from executing his orders?”

That’s something I hadn’t considered. We keep talking about saving the world, and it doesn’t sound so scary when we’re all together; we’re like kids making up stories, and the words are fun but they don’t mean that much. Here, alone in the bedroom with only the low rumble of cars in the distance breaking the silence, it really settles in. We’re risking our lives, but that’s nothing new. We’ve been risking them ever since the first day, with Kamoshida. But we’re risking so much more than that, too. If we fail, we’re risking the lives of everyone else in Japan, and that’s only for starters. There’s no way Shido would stop there, wouldn’t go for the whole world; and with Akechi at his disposal, and with no one else knowing about the Metaverse, who would stop him?

Akira picks back up, “In a selfish way, I’m… glad it was me. I was so ordinary before. I probably would have gone to the best university I could get into, picked the job that would pay me the most, married a nice girl my parents approved of, had kids, and never really taken a moment to wonder if any of it was what I actually wanted. The Metaverse is so dangerous, but I wouldn’t trade being Joker for anything. Even if it means going through awful police interrogations.”

He’s not wrong; Skull gave me a reason to be myself again, made me remember I could be someone worth being proud of. I don’t want to hear it though, not like that. There’s no way he should ever be justifying the torture he went through, should ever be seeing it as anything less than the inexcusable abuse of power it was. Looking down at him, I trace a finger down a pale line on his cheekbone that was covered by a bandage until just a few days ago, and it reminds me of marks on my own body, of bad excuses and paradoxical memories. He’s gone quiet under my touch, his eyes drifting away again.

“Do you miss it?” I ask him impulsively. “Home, I mean.”

There’s something dark in his eyes and I realise I’ve said the wrong thing. It’s just about the worst possible time to bring that up. I should really learn to think more before I speak; someday my inability to shut up is going to get me in trouble. Well, thinking about it, it already has… 

“I do. It’s so dumb, but I do. There’s only small-town judgment waiting for me there, and I love Tokyo, I love all the friends I’ve made, I love the cafe, I love  _ you _ , obviously... but for some stupid reason I still miss it.”

There’s anger in his tone, but I understand.

“I feel that way about my father, sometimes.” He looks up at me, surprised. It’s hard to keep going; I don’t talk about my father much, and this isn’t something I’ve actually ever told anyone, not even Mom. “He’d spend way too much on alcohol, come home drunk after midnight, even beat us sometimes. Most of the time, he was really not a good man. But then sometimes, I’d come home from school and he was this whole other person. He would apologize to us, tell mom that he was so sorry, that he’d stop drinking. He cooked, cleaned, played games with me. It didn’t happen often; maybe once every week or two, but that was enough for me to I remember him that way, too. And when he left, I felt so guilty because I missed him. I missed that version of him, when we got to be a happy family for a few hours.”

I still miss him sometimes. I still feel guilty. Akira reaches up, and I take his hand in mine, squeeze it tight. He speaks then, not really to me, more so at the empty air.

“I miss the smell of waffles on Sunday mornings. I read a book where the hero was always eating waffles when I was 12 or so and I guess I figured if I loved waffles, I’d be cool like him. It was dumb, but my dad never stopped making them. Every Sunday, rain or shine, if he was home there were waffles. And now I wake up on Sundays and it’s just… coffee. And I miss the silence. At night, I’d lay still in my bed and listen to crickets way over on the other side of the garden, it was so quiet. I miss the stars, too. I miss the stars so much. The sky’s just filled with them back home; you can even see the Milky Way if you head outside the city. Here there’s nothing. It’s like the sky is dead.”

He trails off, and I run through my options. I highly doubt Sojiro has a waffle iron in the cafe — although I’m definitely going to be bringing one over one of these days. There’s also no way I can make the hum of the road disappear. But the stars, I’ve got an idea for.

I get up, carefully putting Akira’s head down as I do, and check the shelf by the bed. What I’m looking for is still there, at the back of the bottom shelf; a little pouch of glow in the dark stars from the planetarium. There’s even a set of stickers in the package to put them up. I open the package with a plasticky crinkle, and Akira turns his head at the sound. When I show him what I’m holding, he smiles.

“Help me put them up?”

We end up standing on his bed, which, considering it’s made of a mattress on crates, is really not the best idea. Somehow we survive our ride on the wobbly platform long enough to get all the stars stuck to the beams above the bed, and by the time we’re done, Akira looks a bit more like himself. The plastic stars probably aren’t gonna change much, but a distraction helps, in my experience.

We sit back down, cross legged on the bed, and I finally grab the box of sushi and open it. He reaches over, but I pull the box out of reach and hold out one of his favorites for him. Yeah, he could feed himself, but it’s a smooth move, isn’t it?

He leans forward to bite the piece of sushi, but moves at the last moment and it’s my finger in his mouth instead of the roll. The look he gives me makes it clear it’s no accident, and the slow lick as he pulls away drives the point home. I feel my breath hitch in my throat, swallow hard. We haven’t gone very far yet, just kissing, hands under shirts here and there, but lately he’s started getting more creative — sucking on my fingers, tracing the muscles of my neck with his tongue, grazing teeth against earlobes… If you’d told me 3 months ago that I would ever willingly let someone suck on my fingers, I would have told you you were insane. I still think I’m insane, honestly. But it’s incredibly intimate, and I can’t deny that there’s a part of my brain that draws inevitable parallels with other body parts, down— 

My stomach growls, and I’m pulled away from my thoughts. Akira’s cute, but I’m starving and he’ll still be cute when we’re done eating dinner. I pop the roll he didn’t eat into my mouth, then stick the tray of sushi between us. The look he gives me, frustrated disappointment with a side of huffy, is hilariously adorable.

“Later,” I say with a wink.

The way Akira’s eyes smolder as he looks at me, I get the idea what he’s hungry for isn’t sushi, but then he laughs and falls back, all the intensity leaching out of his gaze. He takes the chopsticks wedged in the side of the box, snaps them open and grabs a roll. I didn’t notice those, but why bother? Fingers work fine.

We finish the sushi pretty quickly, but even so the mood’s changed by the time we do, from flirty to something more soft and sleepy. Akira gets up to throw away the empty box and turn the lights down, and I take the opportunity to lie back on the bed. He settles back down next to me, looking at the ceiling and the stars we set up, and points to one of them. “Look, it’s a smiley face.”

I can’t see it, so I push my head right up against his, and yeah, I guess it sort of looks like a smiley. Maybe one who got run over by a car. I have a strike of inspiration and, looking around, I find what I need.

“Here, look at this one.”

“What, the rectangle?”

“Yeah. It’s Yusuke’s finger frame!”

He turns to me, arching an eyebrow and pursing his lips, and I can’t help but laugh and pull him closer. I love joking around with him. He looks back up to the ceiling, and somehow describes a Morgana, which only someone on a fair amount of drugs would actually be able to see in those stars. Not that real constellations are much better, from what I remember of learning them in primary school. After that, I manage to pick Captain Kidd out, to which he responds with Arsene’s top hat, and we keep going like that for a while, each shape more absurd than the last.

When Akira starts describing a certain disturbing, chariot bound monster we recently met on the Ship, that I hope we never meet again, I decide that’s enough constellations for the night. I shush him with a hand against his mouth, pressing a kiss onto his messy curls. He pushes my hand away with his nose and snuggles up against me, and I spare a thought for the fact that I ought to go brush my teeth and wash my face before we go to sleep. Then he purrs against my neck, sending all thoughts of cleanliness flying right out of my head. I roll over onto him, the entire length of our torsos pressed against each other, and slide my knee up between his legs, maintaining eye contact in the dim light. There’s something to be said for being a little dirty once in a while… 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pegoryu Week 2018, day 3: Anniversary (took a very loose reading of that term...). Contains spoilers.  
> Experimented with first person POV and present tense in here, it was fun!
> 
> [Join me on tumblr!](https://thermopylod.tumblr.com/)


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